Solidarity, a key to security, eludes Salvadoran press

No other journalists are remembered quite like this. Visitors
looking through the glass display at the Monsignor
Romero Center & Martyrs Museum in San Salvador see the pajamas and
other clothes that three Jesuit university priests were wearing when they were shot
down by automatic rifle fire. A series of clear containers are filled with dark
blades of grass cut from the campus lawn where each had spilled his blood.

These priests were slain back in 1989 by El Salvador's U.S.-backed
military
leadership during the largest battle of the nation's long civil war. In a
decision seen as a press freedom milestone, CPJ considered the three university
Jesuits (who were slain along with three other Jesuits, their housekeeper, and
her daughter to eliminate witnesses) to be journalists. The names of Ignacio
Ellacuría,
Ignacio Martín-Baró, and Segundo Montes are also etched into the glass plates of
the Journalists
Memorial at the Newseum in Washington.

The three university Jesuits had independently chronicled events
and criticized policies through a decade of war after tens of thousands of
Salvadorans, many of them independent critics, were murdered
or driven into exile. At a time when two right-wing dailies dominated
domestic news, the Jesuit university weekly newsletter and bimonthly journal ran
analysis and commentary along with select foreign stories in translation,
including a
few of mine.

The Salvadoran press is diverse today, much like the
nation's politics. The Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the party
bearing the name of a 1930s-era revolutionary leader, is now in power. A former
leftist guerrilla is now a critical columnist for the
nation's most conservative daily. And a new generation of talented investigative
journalists is emerging.

But all of this is happening in a professional void in El
Salvador, which does not have a long tradition of independent journalism. The
generational evolution of journalistic mentors passing on lessons to the next
crop of reporters is largely missing here, along with a strong professional
culture and sense of solidarity.

I returned to El Salvador last week to help lead a workshop
on journalist security at a far-ranging event called the Central American
Journalism Forum. The event was organized by the online news outlet El Faro,
which is subsidized by the Open Society Foundations. The very notable speakers
included Frank
La Rue, the U.N. special rapporteur for free expression, the Nobel Laureate
Rigoberta
Menchú,
and the legendary investigative journalists Gustavo
Gorriti of Peru and Monica
Gonzalez of Chile.

But only a handful of journalists from El Salvador and other
Central American nations joined in the conference. Neither the dynamic
Salvadoran online magazine ContraPunto,
run by the son of a legendary guerrilla leader murdered in internecine
violence, nor the fledging Salvadoran press freedom group, APES, or Association of El Salvador
Journalists, which recently called a press
conference to defend El Faro, were given roles at the forum.

Journalists working in risky nations such as Colombia
and Brazil have learned that solidarity
in the press corps is essential to survival. After seeing dozens of their
colleagues murdered, leading journalists in each of those nations organized
press freedom groups to combat anti-press crimes, and collaborative
investigative groups to diffuse the risk while working on sensitive stories.

Many people think journalist security involves the use of
encrypted files and counter-surveillance techniques--and those practices do have
their place. But security is really a way of thinking, a way of approaching
your work. And fostering professional solidarity is crucial to that approach.

Isolation can be dangerous, and one recent episode in El
Salvador illustrates the potential risk. In March, Security and Justice
Minister David Munguía Payés called a press
conference to respond to a hard-hitting story by El Faro--and invited reporters from every major news outlet except El Faro. During the press conference the
security minister said El Faro journalists
could be in danger for their reporting; in response to a question, he raised
the case of a French
journalist murdered here three years ago.

El Faro and
the French journalist, a documentarian and contributor to ContraPunto, were investigating gangs. Most notably, El Faro had exposed the secret
transfer of imprisoned gang leaders to less restrictive jails. The minister
took issue with some aspects of El Faro's
reporting.

Last week, I asked Munguía Payés at a public event
whether his comments were intended to threaten El Faro's journalists. No, he replied, although he admitted that
not inviting the online news magazine's reporters to the press conference was a
mistake. No doubt, but solidarity among the Salvadoran press corps was also
lacking.

Journalists did not appear to object to El Faro's exclusion from the press conference, "especially those
that in some way enjoy certain privileges of political or economic power in the
country," noted
one blogger and University of El Salvador
photojournalism graduate.

Journalists in Colombia and Brazil have paid a terrible price for
their in-depth reporting: They have been murdered, assaulted, kidnapped, and
forced to flee. El Salvador's new generation of journalists has not been tested
so severely yet, but these talented reporters would do well to be proactive, to
work together, and to speak as one on the issues that endanger them all.

They are picking up where the late Jesuits left off, cutting
their own swaths. But, this time, blood should not be spilled.

(Reporting from San
Salvador)

UPDATE: This post has been corrected in the thirteenth paragraph to reflect that the blogger is a photojournalism graduate of University of El Salvador, not Jesuit university as previously stated.

5 comments

Google alerts brought your reflective and stimulating article to me. It brought back so many memories of dozens of visits to the UCA Romero Center. I was in El Salvador from '88-'93 and '99-2010. The first period with Jesuit Refugee Services and the second with PazSalud, a health care program of our NW health system, PeaceHealth. During those years, I met few journalists, but I read the two daily newpapers with consistent frustration and agonizing emotions. With volunteers in rural areas from Morazan to Chalatenango and Bajo Lempa to La Libertad, and knowing the reality of the crimes committed against the rural population, the news reported little semblance of truth. I will never forget reading the report of an FMLN attack on Corral de Piedra, when the reality had been an Air Force shelling. Our volunteers were there, and we received the patients in the city. (Coincidentally, there was a Congressional delegation in El Salvador at the time of the attack, and somehow Jim McDermott (D, WA) managed a visit with Canal 5, Seattle, to the site. (Is now known as Ellacuria, Chalate) Thank you and bless your important and good work.

Thank you, Eleanor. I wish to correct one point in the above blog that I wrote. Concerning the blogger referred to above and repasted below:

Journalists did not appear to object to El Faro's exclusion from the press conference, "especially those that in some way enjoy certain privileges of political or economic power in the country," noted one blogger and Jesuit university photojournalism graduate.

The blogger is, in fact, a University of El Salvador photojournalism graduate. UES is the national university of El Salvador; the Jesuit university, known by its acronym UCA, is a separate, private institution.

My personal apologies to readers and to the blogger, Ivan C. Montecinos. His blog page may be found here:

Thank you, Eleanor. I wish to correct one point in the above blog that I wrote. Concerning the blogger referred to above and repasted below:

Journalists did not appear to object to El Faro's exclusion from the press conference, "especially those that in some way enjoy certain privileges of political or economic power in the country," noted one blogger and Jesuit university photojournalism graduate.

The blogger is, in fact, a University of El Salvador photojournalism graduate. UES is the national university of El Salvador; the Jesuit university, known by its acronym UCA, is a separate, private institution.

My personal apologies to readers and to the blogger, Ivan C. Montecinos. His blog page may be found here:

Thank you, Eleanor. I wish to correct one point in the above blog that I wrote. Concerning the blogger referred to above and repasted below:

Journalists did not appear to object to El Faro's exclusion from the press conference, "especially those that in some way enjoy certain privileges of political or economic power in the country," noted one blogger and Jesuit university photojournalism graduate.

The blogger is, in fact, a University of El Salvador photojournalism graduate. UES is the national university of El Salvador; the Jesuit university, known by its acronym UCA, is a separate, private institution.

My personal apologies to readers and to the blogger, Ivan C. Montecinos. His blog page may be found here:

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